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Dear Mr. President,
Please call a summit for racial reconciliation and invite all parties to participate, even political enemies. Invite former Presidents and representatives of conservative and liberal groups.

Please call our nation to humility and repentance for historic and current racism.

Please demonstrate you professed faith and cease the name-calling and insults…and debate facts and policies.

Please unequivocally denounce any and every form of White Supremacy, neo-Nazi ideology or defense of racial supremacy.

Please build bridges instead of burning them.

I want to believe you have our nation’s best somewhere in your heart – display statesmanship instead of showmanship and perhaps some good can come out of this self-inflicted chaos.

Regardless of the outcome of the 2016 Presidential Election, our national experiment in virtue-based liberty is in a fragile and fraying state, with unprecedented private and public anger. Thoughtful women and men are distressed that the major parties offer two such deeply flawed candidates. Journalistic bias and agitation propaganda have replaced careful research and measured writing. Lost in all of the presidential chaos are the important local and state elections that immediately affect citizens where they live.

I offer these prayers and reflections as a cri de coeur – a cry of the heart – for divine mercy and decisive repentance and renewal in all of us. Underneath the public scandals focused on money, sex and power are deep moral and spiritual ambivalence, with various elites perverting ethical values for their own ideological agendas.

There are three insights and three prayers I invite all to consider and confess as we prepare the election and the aftermath.

Insight One: We are dehumanizing and disintegrating human identity and wholeness. When we ignore biological gender, separate sexual intimacy from marriage and fostering the next generation and reduce identity to current erotic impulses, we are not progressing past religious restrictions. We are actually regressing into primordial impulses that ruin health, oppress non-conforming people and hinder productive life. When we separate “personal morality” from “public policy”, arguing that one can be messed up in private and still lead effectively, we are destroying the foundations of the common good and true liberty. Everyone should bring their whole self to their work, and allow their values to inform their actions and policies. I am not advocating religious tests or totalitarian uniformity of adult relationships. I am asserting that healthy people make better leaders.

Our prayer: “O God, Creator of heaven and earth and fashioner of humankind, forgive our pride and rebellion. Forgive our attempts to improve on your design and destiny. Help us rediscover the dignity, equality and uniqueness of each person and desire for all others the responsibilities and rights we affirm for ourselves. By your grace, empower us for work that expresses neighborly love, creates value and helps generations yet unborn to flourish. Help us to realize that your moral precepts are for our good and any restrictions of our behaviors are for our protection and ultimate fulfillment. Amen.”

Insight Two: We are so ideologically polarized that we are often missing creative solutions for seemingly intractable problems. Economic growth and opportunity include private investments and wise public policies. Rapprochement with Islam and the West must engage both the historic mistakes of colonialism and the rapacious history of Islamic empires and jihadist movements. Peace in the Middle East will never come until Muslim leaders can say the words, “Israel in the national state of the Jewish people.” We can balance the budget and pay off our national debt in a generation, if we will stop seeing wise stewardship as “starving children” and insist on best practices for all that manage the public trust. Urban transformation requires mobilizing servant-leaders from all fields and includes personal transformation and systemic change. Will we roll up our sleeves and serve, or merely keep accusing others?

Our prayer: “O Lord, forgive our arrogance, thinking we could solve every problem with human engineering. You invite us to cry out for wisdom and you promise to bestow it generously, if we come with humility. The signs of divine wisdom include peace, justice, courage and love, fostering harmony and generating hope. Lord, we need the ‘wisdom to do justice’ that Solomon requested as we navigate so many difficult issues, most of which we have generated though our varied intentions and actions. Help us seek you, listen deeply to one another and discover new ways to help people and communities flourish. Amen.”

Insight Three: We need a fresh vision of what personal, local, and national flourishing look like, especially in a global world where we are blessed and informed by so many cultures. This is not wholesale abandonment of the first principles of America’s Declaration and Constitution. In fact, a reaffirmation of the deepest values that informed our founders will help us define citizenship, national identity and liberty in a rapidly changing world. We must reaffirm the virtues of personal responsibility, healthy families, hard work, civil and religious affiliation and local civic engagement. We will not always agree on every definition and policy, but shared vision helps us forge a preferred future.

Our prayer: “Gracious and loving God, you remind us that without vision we will lose restraint and without a sense of purpose, we often compromise our principles. Forgive us, merciful Lord, for all the competing fantasies, the dystopian and utopian visions that do not align with your kind and loving desires for us. Forgive our focus on momentary pleasures at the expense of the coming generations. Transform our shortsighted lusts into loving service. Help us strive for excellence without perfectionism, and principled living with true toleration for other perspectives. How we need your help as we find new common ground for the common good. Amen.”

Our presidents, governors and majors are not messiahs. The finest laws fail without personal and community virtue. The best of our human nature is often corrupted by the worst of our fallen state. All of these insights and prayers are mere words without a thorough spiritual awakening rooted in the good news of Jesus Christ. When confessing Christians repent of compromise and begin compassionate service for their neighbors, such integrity overflows and blesses those that do not have the same religious commitment. When the common good is understood, alliances are formed and people of conscience find ways to work together. Even while we (with civility) argue about our differences (and they do make a difference!), we can act sacrificially for our neighborhood and nation.

May God grant us courage, love and wisdom in these days. Today’s discipline is tomorrow’s destiny, for by divine design, our decisions matter.

Once we are committed to integrity and to the costs of liberty (personal responsibility, delayed gratification and seeking the common good), here are some starting points understanding “the people”:

One: Life and justice issues often take precedence over ethnicity, gender and even class. Abortion, euthanasia, and crime and punishment affect people in every cultural category. America is deeply divided, often because of perceptions rather than serious moral reflection. For example, most people in all voting groups personally disapprove of at least some abortions. But if they are asked if they want to deny a “woman’s right to choose” they vote to protect abortion rights. State by state most Americans do not want to kill babies in the womb. The same inner conflicts exist for end-of-life issues with most recoiling at the thought of hastening death while simultaneously wanting to limit suffering. Anyone involved in our legal system becomes rather cynical as they see the wheels of justice turn imperfectly with power and wealth overtaking fairness.

Leaders must address these issues with both moral clarity and reasonable expectations. Eliminating all but a few abortions (on the way to the end of this practice), creating reasonable guidelines for stewarding terminal patients (without active euthanasia) and fostering restitution over incarceration are all avenues creating possible consensus.

Two: Most Americans have (at least aspirational) moral values and believe in traditional marriage; however, they are afraid of being seen as intolerant and do not want to deprive their alternate lifestyle neighbors of their rights. America and select Western nations are the first sociopolitical groups in history to equalize relationships that do not produce the next generation. Is there a way forward consistent with empirical data, moral values and maximal liberty?

Yes. But it requires a long-term civics lesson in America’s Constitution – a document designed to limit the scope of federal power, not impose it on individuals or states. Wise leaders will work to return more economic, political and social power to states and local governments. If a state wants unique marriage laws, that is fine, but marriage is not a civil right, it is a social contract left to the states (and a sacramental covenant for the religious). The path forward must reject homophobia and protect all persons while no longer marginalizing the deep values of many religious and secular people.

This sounds good in theory. However, “limited federal government” and “States’ Rights” are code words for slavery and Jim Crow among African Americans. It is only in the last 50 years that millions of women and men were allowed to vote and have (the beginnings of) equal access to economic and educational opportunities. Restoring local and personal power must not come at the expense of legitimate civil rights.

Three: President Eisenhower, a moderate Republican, warned of the power of the “military-industrial complex.” Progressives are naturally suspicious of the military and the politicians that are quick to deploy violent solutions before exhausting diplomatic options, especially the UN. Conservatives honor the military ethos and get frustrated when soldiers in the field have their hands tied in the war against terror. Apart from absolute pacifism (a respectable position when applied consistently) and hair-trigger militarism, leaders must bring moral clarity and 21st century strategic wisdom to their stewardship of America’s defense.

America is on sound moral ground when she defends herself from attack in concert with her allies, while refusing policies of long-term occupation.

Telling the truth politically begins with each of us inwardly facing the truth about ourselves. When we embrace honesty and humility, repentance and reconciliation, there is hope for America and the world.